November 25, 2007

Okay, it's only been since August 2004. But still. My beloved has NEVER been called up for jury duty, and this is the third time since the little angel was born that I've received that fated slip in the mail. Yes, tomorrow, the Monday after Thanksgiving, I'm once again doing my civic duty.

Bah. Fucking. Humbug.

Of course, it's my busiest season at work. And I barely want to go to work, let alone the jury hogpen for six hours. But what are you going to do? I have to go give some poor schmuck the opportunity for a trial by peers. Or something like that. I hope the video is better this time.

One little thing that has steadily become a bigger thing is this blog. I've been working on the introduction for my mommyblogging anthology (tentatively titled Sleep Is for the Weak: True Tales to Get You Through Parenthood, due out next fall by Chicago Review Press) tonight. I know, on Thanksgiving, but I heard from my publisher yesterday, and she had some great suggestions, but I've always been the type to want to do my homework or read my library book the minute I get home, because I'm worried I'll lose my inertia at any moment. Also, she needs the changes in two weeks to keep the train on its tracks for September.

One thing she wanted me to talk about was why I started blogging, why I read blogs and why I chose my contributors. As I wrote, I realized how much this blog and my readers have given me. An outlet. A response. An audience. A reason to make light of the bad times. A moral compass. A reason to make rules for my writing and personal conduct. A record of my mothering career. A record of my marriage and my daughter's life, my relationship with my family and friends, with the media and the world around me.

November 21, 2007

Last night I was struggling to fix my Christmas card mailing list. Last year I sent about 40 cards, but apparently to all the wrong people. I only got 50% ROI from the cards I did send, and then I got a whole bunch from people to whom I didn't send a card, and spent the rest of the holiday season feeling kind of like a shit when I looked at the cards hanging from the back door but not really doing anything about it.

This year I'm renewed! I bought 80 cards. I am going to send a card to everyone who sent one to me last year! Tra la!

Fuck. This means I have to find addresses for all those people, and also try to use my 85-year-old desktop in the stinky basement to reformat all those mailing address from one type of Avery label to another, and the Avery label wizard can go to hell, sneering as it did at me last night, a librarian in possession of one hall pass that she stubbornly refuses to relinquish in the midst of a tornado. GIVE UP THE FORMATTING, AVERY WIZARD! I HATE YOU!

I spent about two hours on this, finally printing out the old list and retyping it into a new one. Of course, half of the labels had to be printed with only a name to remind me to send that person a card, even though it will take me three weeks to locate an address to go with the name.

There is a point here, and it's this: Over half of my Christmas card list has either moved or added a new person to their lives in the last year. Half, Eddie. They've either had babies or gotten married or started seriously dating or moved. HALF! That's a lot of uproar! You go along thinking everything's Steady Eddie, then along comes your Christmas card list to bring its existential holiday reminder that chaos is the only "normal." Hold me, Yossarian.